


Tambov wolf is your friend

by chantefable



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Relationships, Cold War, Falling In Love, M/M, Partnership, Soviet Union, Spies & Secret Agents, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 06:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5196266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stern Russian werewolf Illya Kuryakin and his dangerous sentimental affections.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tambov wolf is your friend

Illya has always liked proverbs and sayings. Especially about wolves, and no, not just for obvious reasons.

There’s comfort in these traditional grains of wisdom, insights that are tried and true. And wolves are the animals of the modern day. His homeland is the land of wolves, wolves wearing epaulettes and uniform, and bearing secret authorizations. Wolves guard sheep, wolves guard wolves. Wolves everywhere. Illya, too, is a wolf, his sandy gray pelt thoroughly groomed by the special forces. 

The fact that he was actually born a lycanthrope is a mere coincidence. However, Illya cannot deny that it was a terrific stroke of good luck as well: human wolves were spared the worst of the hunt even at the height of Stalin’s repressions. Whether it was natural or unnatural, Illya cannot say, but the wolf-people were absorbed in the Soviet system. They were deemed too useful, too successful at mauling the sheep of the fifth column. The winters of the Great Patriotic War were long and cold. His human father perished, his wolf mother climbed the ranks in the NKVD. And wolf cub Illya followed in her footsteps.

_A wolf feeds on his feet._

They have fallen on hard times at UNCLE. The powers that be essentially tolerate their organization to thwart each other’s operations and take no blame, and this whole world peace business means constant flight and pursuit. Two sides of the same coin, really. Illya, Gaby and Solo travel and make use of dubiously acquired intelligence less to save human lives and more to avoid escalations of conflict. Their job is to keep the wolves sated and the sheep intact. 

Alexander Waverly poorly maintains a precarious balance between his ingrained worship of permanent British interests and visionary hopes for a balanced, multi-polar future. The financial management under his administration is abysmal, but Illya is not much perturbed by scarcity or lack of valuable human resources. It is quite all right to roam the world as a small pack, he thinks. 

He frequently obeys the impulse to tuck Gaby in for the night and wrap her in care that is only gruffly accepted, so that she is warm in their lair of the day. Safe-house. Hotel. Doesn’t matter. He genuinely likes having Solo at his flank, fighting with him shoulder to shoulder and trading hours of wakefulness. First watch. Second watch. Moons pass and they keep running, together. Illya is used to fight both for his place and for his morsel. It is not much different than before, really.

_A hungry wolf is stronger than a sated dog._

Occasionally, the claws and fangs of his KGB superiors reach Illya and scrape him a little. Just a precautionary measure. Sure, his hackles rise and his temper flares, white-hot, but no matter how much Illya wants to howl and run sometimes, he understands that this is necessary. This is the way of military intelligence, of counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism. They keep people terrified, keep them on a leash. Solo knows all about it, and sometimes Illya thinks that Solo would be willing to talk to him if Illya ever tried. Not the details, of course; they are spies, after all, they can parse the facts for themselves and construct hypotheses without any need to push a partner into saying things they are not at liberty to say. But Solo, more than most, might be able to understand Illya’s position.

Sometimes, when they are hastily wrapping up the mission and leaving, the countdown to extraction pounding inside Illya’s head like the horn sounds and bustle of a winter hunt, he really wants to feel the skin of Solo’s neck between his jaws. Solo’s coiffed black hair has luster, his smile is sharp and white, and he moves like a predator. Illya wants him. Illya waits for the day he might stop wanting him, waits with bated breath. The day never comes. Illya wants to do something, to advance, but he cannot, laws and regulations burning around him like forest fire.

He is hungry, constantly ravenous, he is being prodded and chased by the circumstances and his own traitorous thoughts, but it’s all right. Illya is always hungry, and therefore mean. It is better for the job.

_No matter how much you feed the wolf, he still looks into the woods._

Despite the mundane difficulties and petty everyday grievances that come with espionage, Illya enjoys the work at UNCLE. No two days are the same, even if they blur into a colorful routine of same old surveillance, interrogations, blackmail, manipulation and brutal force. There is diversity in this sameness, and successful missions, blue skies and Solo’s keen blue eyes give Illya’s days a wonderful kind of flavor. 

And yet every night, he thinks about his mother, imagines the outline of her wolf form prowling in the shadow, watchful. He thinks about Oleg, who had beaten the skill and the fury into Illya and a dozen other cubs at the KGB recruit school. He thinks about the green laziness of the outskirts of Zelenograd and about the noisy streets of Moscow, two different delights for a young wolf gaining strength: a wolf by blood and kin in the wild, recklessly running in the open, drunk on nature; a wolf by calling and training, stalking among the civilians who give him a wide berth, mindful of his allegiance. He misses home sometimes, so much.

Illya is not sure which one is more deviant, his nostalgia for the country and the system, when he has been away, following orders, for most of the last ten years, or his enjoyment of what being at UNCLE gives him, of who he can be with. The latter feels like indulgence and infatuation. Illya treasures every little detail, every memory that gives him a deeper insight into his partner. They are sparse but embarrassingly precious, and sometimes Illya wants to shed his human skin and simply be. Solo, more than anyone, might be willing to understand and be – friends. 

There is no Russian proverb or saying that fully encapsulates Solo, though. Not when he disappears one day, and Illya just has to stand there, blinking dumbly at the American’s empty bed at the Dublin safe-house and remembering with a belated stab of wrath the completely incongruous sadness in Solo’s eyes when yesterday, he whispered _I’m sorry, Peril_ after something as foolish as spilling Illya’s drink at the dingy pub around the corner. Tambov wolf is your friend, Illya.

Solo is gone, and so is the ground under Illya’s feet, and so is the information that Waverly, along with everyone at UNCLE, have been adamant must not get into the hands of the CIA.

_Homo homini lupus est._

**Author's Note:**

> Tambov wolf is your friend! (lit. Tambov wolf is your comrade, _тамбовский волк тебе товарищ_ ) – idiom, a retort refusing overtures of friendship, being addressed as friend/comrade by someone.  
> Tambov – a town with a historically notable population of wolves.


End file.
